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Monday, January 7, 2013

Dismayed that family members are spread out over the house, each with a separate PC or tablet? Lenovo has something it believes will get them back together: a PC the size of a coffee table that works like a gigantic tablet and lets four people use it at once.

Lenovo Group Ltd., one of the world's largest PC makers, is calling the IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC the first "interpersonal computer" - as opposed to a "personal computer."

At first glance, it looks like a regular all-in-one machine in the vein of the iMac: It's a 27-inch screen with the innards of a Windows 8 computer built into it, and it can stand up on a table.

But you can pick it up off the table, unhook the power cord and lay it flat for games of "Monopoly." It's big enough to fit four people around it, and the screen can respond to ten fingers touching it at the same time.

There's more at the original article, but the implications for tabletop gaming are clear, and even alluded to in the article. Where monstrosities such as dedicated gaming tables have fallen flat in terms of finding a market, this device might actually have a chance. It's going to start retailing this summer at $1,699, but doubtless that will come down in short order, and discounted prices will be had online as well.

Imagine something like that for playing Cataan. Or displaying a dungeon map, or battle grid with markers for characters and monsters, able to be manipulated in real time by tapping the screen. If this thing does catch on, it veritably screams for someone to put together an application to facilitate generic dungeon crawls, or even system-specific facilitators. Heck, right off the bat it could be used to display large flat image files, which could be good enough for battle-mat applications.

I'll be interested to see whether this gets any traction. It's a high price point, but there's lots of potential there.

Got this in my inbox today. I might just make the journey into Brooklyn for this!

It's been quite a wait, but it's finally time! The first issue of Gygax magazine will be unboxed at 2pm EST on Saturday, January 26th at The Brooklyn Strategist. We'll be streaming the unboxing live at GygaxMagazine.com for everyone who can't be in New York City that day.

As soon as the first box is opened, you'll be able to order single copies or subscriptions online. (And of course, we'll have them in the store as well.)

The staff of Gygax magazine, including Ernie Gygax, Luke Gygax, Tim Kask, Jayson Elliot, Jim Wampler, and James Carpio, will be online for a video Q&A. We'll have some other special guests that day as well.

After the unboxing, we'll keep the video running while we run gaming events all afternoon. There will be a limited number of online seats available to join the in-store games via the virtual tabletop Roll20. A followup email will be sent next week with a link to a form where you can sign up to play online.

Keep following us on Twitter and Facebook for more details as we get closer to the unboxing day! We'll be sending a followup email next week with details for anyone who wants to attend the event in person.

East Coast OSR Convention

A Note on Legalities

Note: Many of the names used herein are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast Inc., Gygax Games, Troll Lord Games, Pied Piper Publishing, etc. The use herein is quite unauthorized and should not be construed to challenge their ownership of said trademarks or intellectual property in any way. This work is presented in the spirit of “fan fiction”. Some work is published under the Open Gaming License, as indicated.

I'm just a guy writing about the games and the settings and movies and other stuff that he loves.

More precisely, this Web site is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This Web site may use the trademarks and other intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast LLC, which is permitted under Wizards' Fan Site Policy. For example, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, D&D®, WORLD OF GREYHAWK® are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast and D&D® core rules, game mechanics, characters and their distinctive likenesses are the property of the Wizards of the Coast. For more information about Wizards of the Coast or any of Wizards' trademarks or other intellectual property, please visit their website at www.wizards.com.

BRW Games™, Olde School Role Playing Games™, Castle of the Mad Archmage™, Glitterdark™, The World of Erseta Fantasy Setting™, Adventures Dark and Deep™ and Adventures Great and Glorious™ are all trademarks of BRW Games, LLC.

Some links might be part of an affiliate program (RPGNow, Amazon, etc.), which could be worth a few c.p. to me. My beer fund thanks you.

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